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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143654">Many Roads</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed'>PR Zed (przed)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Random Harvest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:02:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,025</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143654</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Three other ways Paula and Smithy could have found happiness together.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Margaret Hanson | Paula Ridgeway/Charles Rainier | Smithy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. "I'm All Right…Really"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/gifts">Beatrice_Otter</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Beatrice_Otter, you asked for a Random Harvest AU. Well, I couldn't decide on which AU I wanted to write, so I decided to write all of them. I hope they bring you joy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Paula was never quite sure why she stepped into the tobacconist. She didn't smoke. She didn't need matches. And she didn't like the nosy old biddy who ran the place.</p><p>Maybe it was because the out-of-the-way shop, with its homely, drooping aspidistra plant, its burnished wood display cases and glass jars filled with rich-smelling tobacco, seemed like an oasis of calm amid the pandemonium of the armistice celebrations.</p><p>Or maybe it was because she saw him, the soldier, walk in ahead of her and thought that he didn't look well.</p><p>Two of the chorus girls had gone down with the flu on their last stop and the week before one of the stagehands, Billy, had actually died from it. Now she was on the watch for illness everywhere.</p><p>She stepped inside the shop, and heard the soldier struggle with his words, heard the biddy guess he was from the asylum on the outskirts of town.</p><p>He seemed kind and gentle, exactly the sort of man who shouldn't have been sent to fight; the sort of man who would have suffered from being in the trenches. Exactly the sort of man who shouldn't have been confined to any sort of asylum. </p><p>When the shopkeeper disappeared into the back, Paula opened her mouth to tell the soldier the woman was going to call the asylum, to tell him he should leave now if he didn't want to go back to that place. But before she could utter a syllable, the soldier fell, crumpling to the floor like an empty suit of clothes.</p><p>She yelled at the shopkeeper to call a proper doctor, not the blessed asylum, and then dropped to her knees at the soldier's side.</p><p>With the crowds in the streets, it seemed to take an eternity for help to arrive. Paula pillowed the soldier's head with her hat (a ridiculous frivolous thing, with too much ribbon and frippery to be at all comfortable for the poor man), and patted his hand, wishing there was more that she could do for him. All the time, the old biddy was fluttering around the shop, worrying about the reputation of her business. </p><p>The soldier roused only once during that long wait. </p><p>His eyes were deep brown and kind, and though he looked at Paula, he didn't seem to see her.</p><p>"I'm all right…really," he said, his voice cultured and gentle and as broken as the rest of him. </p><p>"Of course, you are," Paula said, putting more confidence in the words than she felt.</p><p>Then, before she could say anything else, a doctor and two porters burst through the doors and took charge of the soldier, shooing her into a corner of the shop.</p><p>The last she saw of him, he was being bundled in the back of a car by the porters, who seemed more concerned that they'd let one of their "loonies" escape than they were that about the suffering of a fellow human being.</p><p>She never did find out what happened to the soldier. And maybe it was that uncertainty that kept him in her mind.</p><p>She'd read an article about how many people—young people!—had succumbed to the flu, and wonder if the soldier had been one of them.</p><p>She'd see a young man in uniform, or missing a limb, or with that haunted look in his eyes that too many young men who'd served their country seemed to have, and wonder if the soldier had ever recovered from the shell shock that must have sent him to that asylum in the first place.</p><p>She'd see a young couple on the street, and wonder if the soldier had a sweetheart or a wife. Wondered if he had a family, people who looked after him. People who might mourn him.</p><p>She never married herself. It never seemed worth the effort, not when she was constantly moving from town to town, from theatre to theatre. She was never in one place long enough to form a deep attachment to anyone, and she wanted more than what her fellow thespians or the bright young things who haunted the stage door could offer. The rest of the music hall company became her family, and the memory of the kind, broken, brown-eyed soldier became her ghost beau. A touchstone of what might have been.</p><p>Years passed, and she went from playing provincial vaudeville houses to theatre in London's West End, from musicals to serious dramas. As her reputation grew and she became, if not quite famous, then well known, she received invitations to openings and operas, galas and garden parties. </p><p>She hardly ever accepted an invitation.  You couldn't do eight performances a week and have a whirlwind social calendar.  But she did accept a few. Usually only if she knew the host. Or if it was for a good cause. Or if it promised to be amusing.</p><p>The invitation for the Rainier Foundation Ball, however, she accepted on a whim.</p><p>She didn't know the host, but she'd heard of Sir Charles Rainier. Rainier's owned enough businesses, large and small, that even she knew the company. And according to her more bohemian, politically-minded friends, Sir Charles had done more good than harm as an MP and minister in the government.</p><p>She was presented to Sir Charles near the end of the evening as he was doing a final circuit of the room.</p><p>He was a quiet man.  Not at all what she'd expected from a politician and captain of industry. He greeted her kindly, giving her a bow before asking intelligent questions about the show she was currently starring in that told her he'd not only seen it, but engaged with it. She asked less informed, but enthusiastic, questions about what little she knew of his work in Parliament and what his family's foundation did.</p><p>Very quickly, their conversation turned from a necessary social obligation into something she was enjoying very much.  Paula had always had the gift of talking easily with anyone, but with Sir Charles it felt as if she'd known him before, as if they were reunited friends.</p><p>"I hope you don't think it's odd," Sir Charles said at one point, between her delivering an amusing anecdote about a stage manager saving the day by delivering a missing prop on stage, mid-performance and Sir Charles explaining how he'd had to leave his studies after the war to save the family business. "But have we met before?"</p><p>"I don't think so," she replied. "But it feels like it, doesn't it!"</p><p>She was disappointed when an aide appeared at Sir Charles' side to let him know that one of the foundation's most generous donors was waiting for a word.</p><p>"It's been my pleasure, Miss Ridgeway."</p><p>"Mine as well, Sir Charles," Paula said, and meant it.</p><p>The following week, whenever she had a spare moment ,she found herself thinking not about her ghost beau, but about Sir Charles Rainier. So, it seemed almost inevitable when she entered her dressing room after the Saturday performance and found Sir Charles himself sitting awkwardly on the one extra chair in the room, a bouquet of yellow, pink and white roses clutched in one hand.</p><p>"Do you mind?" he asked, looking more like an uncertain callow young man than a minister of state who'd been knighted by the Queen. "My aide asked if I could meet you after the performance, and the stage manager told me to wait here. I don't want to impose." He began to awkwardly stand, and then, as if he'd forgotten he had them, held out the flowers. "These are for you. I thought red might be a bit forward, but I've always like roses."</p><p>"I don't mind at all. And the roses are beautiful." She took the bouquet from him and placed them in one of the many vases scattered around the dressing room. She settled him back on the chair, and they chatted as she changed behind her dressing screen, taking up their conversation from the previous week as if they'd never left off.</p><p>"I hope it's not presumptuous, but I've booked a table at the Savoy. If, that is, you'd care to join me for dinner?"</p><p>Paula had met powerful men before.  She'd even been wooed by a few. But she'd never met one who was so considerate of <i>her</i> wants.</p><p>"You may presume away," she said as she emerged from behind the screen, stage costume replaced by one of her favourite dresses, draped satin tailored to flatter her figure. "I would love to join you for dinner. I'm always famished after a show."</p><p>"Hearty work, entering an audience." Sir Charles had a definite mischievous twinkle in his eye.</p><p>"You may laugh, but it is. Remembering all your lines and being in the right spot and making sure the audience laughs or gasps at the right time."</p><p>"Oh, I'm sure it is." He helped her into her coat and led her out to the backstage chaos that was such a cheerful part of her world.  "You can tell me all about it over caviar and champagne."</p><p>So, she did. She told him about dress rehearsals and costume fittings.  About working with good directors, and bad. And he told her about running a business, and the dance of compromise and coercion it took to get a law through Parliament. Before she knew it, she'd agreed to have dinner with him again, after her next performance.</p><p>One dinner led to another, and soon enough everyone from the stage manager to her co-stars expected Sir Charles to take her to dinner after each performance. Any time he was delayed, whether by a late vote in Parliament or an emergency with his large extended family, she felt bereft. He seemed a missing piece of her life she'd finally found, a piece she couldn't do without.</p><p>Then one night, perhaps a month after she'd met Sir Charles, she found out how true that was. </p><p>It was the play's closing night. They'd already been extended two months beyond their initial run, and had been completely sold out their final week. The company was looking to celebrate, and Sir Charles (now Charles to her, and Charlie to the disrespectful wretches she worked with) had rented space at Simpson's so they could do just that.</p><p>Paula had changed from costume to evening gown, and was in the middle of removing her stage makeup and redoing it with something more suited to an evening at Simpson's. Charles was sitting in his usual spot in her dressing room, and was assuring the wardrobe mistress that yes, she was invited, and yes, she could bring a friend, when he looked at his watch.</p><p>"I hadn't realized the time," he said. "Do you mind if I call the office? We're presenting a bill tomorrow and I want to make sure no emergencies have arisen."</p><p>"Go ahead." She waived at the door with a lipstick. "You know where the phone is."</p><p>Charles knew where everything backstage was. After the first night, when he accidentally bumped into the props table and moved the fan she needed for the final act out of place, he'd made a point of learning where everything was and how he could keep from tangling up the (mostly) well-oiled machine of cast and crew. It was one of the many things she…well, loved about him.  Not that she was <i>in</i> love with him. Not precisely. But she was more and more thinking that she could be, very easily.</p><p>She finished applying her lipstick, and smiled as she heard Charles talking on the phone to his aide. His voice was so soothing, refined and kind. She thought he might have done well on the stage. She had a break few weeks break before rehearsals began on her next show, and she thought she might use the time to visit Parliament, listen to Charles deliver a speech, or respond during Question Time.</p><p>She was only half listening to what Charles was saying, but then he said four words that overturned her view of the world.</p><p>"I'm all right. Really."</p><p>With those four words, Paula was taken from musing in her dressing room about seeing Charles in the House to soothing a broken young soldier in a provincial tobacconist.</p><p>She sat frozen in place, remembering kind brown eyes and a hesitant voice. It seemed impossible that Sir Charles Rainier was her ghost beau, and yet also strangely inevitable.</p><p>She was still sitting there, immobile, when Charles returned.</p><p>"Everything's fine. No emerg-" he stopped abruptly, then quickly was at her side.  "Paula, what's wrong? Are you ill?" He took her hand, his touch as gentle as everything else about him.</p><p>She shook her head, trying to work out what she needed to say.</p><p>"No," she managed to get out. "No, I'm not ill.  I'm just-" But she wasn't sure what she "just" was.</p><p>"You are ill." Charles laid his hand on her forehead, and then started to move away. "I'll call my doctor. He can-"</p><p>"No!" Paula caught his hand and pulled him back to her side with a sudden strength. "I don't need a doctor. But I do need something from you."</p><p>"Anything for you, Paula." He pulled up the lone extra chair, staying close enough that she didn't her need to release her grip, and sat down across from her, concerned brown eyes locked with hers.</p><p>"I need to know…" She paused, not knowing exactly how to phrase this. "Where were you when the war ended, Charles? On Armistice Day?"</p><p>"When the war ended? Why would you want to know…" His voice trailed off. He frowned, looking off into space, and it suddenly seemed as if he was no longer in the room with her, but caught in another, terrible time.</p><p>"Melbridge," he finally said.  "I was in Melbridge. I'd slipped away from…" His voice trailed off and he was caught in his memories for a moment before he came back to himself and looked at her once again. "But you know where I slipped away from, don't you? I remember." He reached out and carefully took a lock of her hair in his hand. "Hair like a bright penny. And you were so kind to me."</p><p>He dropped the lock, his hand hovering mid-air, as if he didn't know what to do with it.</p><p>"Have you known all this time?" He looked almost betrayed, and she shook her head immediately to deny it.</p><p>"I just worked it out. When you were talking to your aide just now you said 'I'm all right.' That was the only thing you said to me, that night in Melbridge." She took his hand and brought it tightly to her chest. "You've stayed with me all these years. I've often wondered who you were.  If you'd survived the flu. If you'd made it back to your home."</p><p>"I survived." He gave a short, tight smile of grim satisfaction. "Though it took some time for me to return home." He gripped her hand, as if to comfort her, but he looked to be the one in need of comfort. "It's not common knowledge, but I didn't know who I was back then. I'd been found injured in a shell hole near Arras with no identification and no memory." </p><p>He looked off in the distance, and she could tell he had drifted back to that dark time.</p><p>"The memories began to drift back when I was ill, but it still took several months before I'd put together I was Charles Rainier of Random Hall. And longer still for me to be well enough to return to my family." There was another long pause. "It's not a time I like to dwell on. Except…" </p><p>He looked up, looked directly in her eyes, and she could tell he was no longer caught in the past but very much in the present. </p><p>"Except for that young woman with hair like a bright penny. I think of her often." He stopped, and she could see his lip quiver the minutest amount. "I sometimes feel that my life began again with her. That her kindness began to heal something in me. And now that I know she was you, everything makes so much sense."</p><p>"Oh, Charles…" She felt a well of emotion flow up through her body, a mixture of joy and loss, grief and elation. She felt everything at once.</p><p>"I've been thinking and thinking, and, damn it all, this isn't how I wanted this to happen, but…" Never letting go of her hand, Charles slipped off the chair and went down on one knee, the very image of a romantic suitor. "Paula Ridgeway, will you do me the very great honour of being my wife?"</p><p>Paula knew this wasn't the sort of decision one should make impetuously, but she also knew there was only one possible answer to this question.</p><p>"Yes, my darling. With all my heart, yes."</p><p>When the wardrobe mistress came back to the dressing room a minute later to collect Paula's costume, they were still caught in an embrace that Paula didn't ever want to release.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. "I'd Have Liked to Belong to Them"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Smith had thought that being in the hospital, the asylum, had been bad when he'd had only memories of being in a German POW camp.</p>
<p>But to be brought back here when he had memories of freedom, of Paula, of what he was increasingly certain was love, was the cruelest thing he could imagine.</p>
<p>Not for the first time, he cursed the Melbridge station master for recognizing Paula. If the bothersome man hadn't had the train flagged down at its first stop, they would never have been found. And he wouldn't have been dragged out of their second-class compartment, calling for Paula all the while.</p>
<p>It was the last time he'd spoken. The gains he'd made under Paula's care had evaporated, and he struggled now to even make eye contact with the doctors and porters and patients in this place.  This jail.</p>
<p>He heard the door to the ward open, and Dr. Benet begin to perform his rounds. Smith put his head under his pillow to avoid hearing a single falsely cheerful syllable from the man. But that didn't stop Benet from stopping by his bedside.</p>
<p>"How are you this morning, Smith?" Benet sounded nothing like a man who'd torn away every shred of hope Smith had had.</p>
<p>"G-g-g," Smith struggled to get the words out. "Go away!" he managed to say, and grinned in grim satisfaction underneath his pillow that he'd finally managed to speak again.</p>
<p>"You don't mean that, my good fellow." It was galling how Benet sounded hurt, when he was the one who'd caused Smith such pain.</p>
<p>"I d-d-do."</p>
<p>"I'll follow your wishes," Benet said, and laid an unwelcome hand on Smith's shoulder. "But we shall be friends again soon. I'm sure of it."</p>
<p>Smith didn't try to say anymore.  He let the turning of his back towards Benet speak for him.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Smith spent two more days in bed, refusing to talk, refusing to even look at Benet. On the third day, when he finally chose to get up and dressed, he made a point of turning away from Benet anytime he entered the ward.</p>
<p>Not that it stopped Benet from talking to him. The man was relentless. Though what was worse was the reaction of the other men in the ward, his fellow prisoners. Those traitors began to take Benet's side.</p>
<p>Even poor, silent Trempitt who could barely stand to be near Benet himself stood up for the doctor. After Smith had rebuffed yet another one of Benet's overtures, Trempitt dropped a scrap of paper folded into quarters on his night stand. Smith ignored the note for hours, but when he finally unfolded it, it said <i>He means well</i> in scratchy script.</p>
<p>He'd always been fond of Trempitt, had even looked out for him, but he was so overcome with anger he tore the paper into bits and flung it on the floor.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Five days after he'd been torn away from Paula and hope, Benet came to see him once again.</p>
<p>"Good morning, Smith," Benet said, his cheerfulness as relentless as ever.</p>
<p>Smith stood and deliberately turned his chair away from Benet and sat again with his back to him.</p>
<p>He heard a sigh, before Benet spoke again.</p>
<p>"I know you're angry with me," Benet said. "But I may have some good news." Smith could hear footsteps, and then Benet was standing in front of him. "A woman has arrived who believes you might be her son." He paused. "She was quite insistent on the fact, actually."</p>
<p>Smith tensed. He couldn't go through that again. He looked down at the floor, kicking at the leg of his bed, and shook his head.</p>
<p>"My dear fellow, I know you had disappointment with the Lloyds. "</p>
<p>Smith's thoughts were wrenched back to the Lloyds, the last family who thought he might be their missing son.</p>
<p>"I'd have liked to belong to them," he said. Though the expression of loss on Mrs. Lloyd's face when she'd realized she didn't know him was going to stay etched into his memory until he died. He wasn't sure he wanted to add another item to that gallery of pain.</p>
<p>"I know you would have," Benet said, sympathetically. "But this new woman is a new chance. You don't want to turn her away without knowing if she is your mother, do you?"</p>
<p>Smith shook his head.</p>
<p>"Then, what shall I tell her?" Benet asked.</p>
<p>Smith clenched his fists, squeezed his eyes shut, and just for a moment allowed himself to think about Paula, hoping she was safe. Then he opened his eyes and faced Benet.</p>
<p>"Is…Paula..all…right?" he forced out, each word taking monumental effort.</p>
<p>"Paula? You mean the young woman you were with? I believe she's fine."</p>
<p>"No one…hurt her?"</p>
<p>"Of course not!" Benet seemed genuinely appalled by the possibility, and that told Smith that Paula really <i>was</i> fine. However much Smith hated him right now, Benet was a man of integrity.</p>
<p>"Good."</p>
<p>Benet must have seen a change in him.</p>
<p>"You'll see this woman? The one who may be your mother?"</p>
<p>Smith took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out. If this woman really was his mother, perhaps she could take him out of this place.  And if he was no longer confined here, perhaps he could find Paula.</p>
<p>He nodded.</p>
<hr/>
<p>As they did when the Lloyds came, they let Smith smarten himself up. He put on a uniform, and brushed his hair, and then they put him in a room to await this woman who might be his mother. He saw the shadows of her and Benet in the frosted glass of the door, and steeled himself for another disappointment.</p>
<p>The door opened, and there before him was not a stranger, but Ella, the character woman of Paula's music hall troupe dressed up like the costume version of an upper-class matron.</p>
<p>"There he is, my poor boy!" Ella rushed towards him, her usual working-class accent now perfectly posh. Before he could object, she wrapped him in an overwhelming hug until he felt he was being smothered in lace and ribbons. "We've been so very worried about you, dear, dear Frederick." </p>
<p>Smith frowned, but Ella pulled back and gave him a wink, and he decided to play along, confident that Paula was behind this subterfuge.</p>
<p>"Frederick Collins," Benet said. "That's your name. Does it sound familiar?"</p>
<p>"Fr-frederick," he said, stumbling over the syllables and hoping he was giving a convincing performance of a man discovering his own name. "I think it…does."</p>
<p>"Oh, Freddy," Ella said, "We've all been so worried about you.  The family will be so glad to see you home."</p>
<p>"I'm not so sure-" Benet started to object.</p>
<p>"Oh, don't you worry Doctor," Ella said, displaying the perfect combination of confidence and poise to run roughshod over any medical objections, "I have all the proper paperwork.  And I'm sure you'll agree that the care of his loving family is what dear Freddy needs to recover."</p>
<p>"Yes, but-"</p>
<p>"Then, it's settled."</p>
<p>Ella took Smith by the arm, and led him out of that small room into Benet's office. There she produced a birth certificate and other assorted paperwork for one Frederick Collins that looked so official Smith wondered if they hadn't found his real identity. Finally, she bullied Benet into signing his discharge.</p>
<p>Before he quite knew what had happened, Smith was walking out the gates of the asylum and taking a seat in an impressive black car driven by uniformed chauffeur. When Smith looked closer, the chauffeur turned out to be Ella and Paula's manager, Sam. Sam gave him a wink that matched Ella's while Benet delivered some final instructions on his care to his "mother."</p>
<p>It was the wink that did it, made Smith realize that he was really escaping the asylum for good. That he was going to see Paula soon.</p>
<p>Before he knew it, Ella had taken her place beside him and they were heading back into the town's centre.</p>
<p>"P-P-Paula?" he managed to say.</p>
<p>"She's waiting for you, duckie," Ella said, slipping back into her own accent.</p>
<p>"This was all her idea," Sam offered from the front as he turned a corner. "She worked on that respectable matron costume for Ella. And she got Thomas to make up your paperwork. Apparently, Thomas was a forger before he went straight and became a stage hand. Who knew?!"</p>
<p>"Paula knew." Ella stuck an elbow in Smith's ribs.  "That girl knows everything. You've got yourself a good one, there."</p>
<p>Not knowing how to answer, Smith ducked his head down and stared at his hands twisting in his lap. He kept his head down until they came to a final stop in the middle of Melbridge. Smith looked up, to see the familiar sign of the Melbridge Arms swinging above the car, and froze. It was almost too much, knowing that he was free of the asylum, that Paula was so near.</p>
<p>"Out you go, duckie," Ella said, giving him a nudge. "Don't keep her waiting."</p>
<p>Smith struggled with the door handle, then nearly tripped as he stepped out of the car, but he got his feet under him quickly enough. He was walking, then running to the pub door. When he pushed it open, there Paula was, anxiously pacing the pub's floor, with the rest of her troupe huddled in front of the bar.</p>
<p>With her bright penny red hair and flashing blue eyes, she was as beautiful as she'd been in his thoughts.  More so.</p>
<p>He stood at the threshold for a moment, trying to find his voice, to call out to her. In the end, he didn't need to. Alerted by the murmuring of the rest of the troupe behind her, she finally looked up and saw him.</p>
<p>"Smithy?" At first, she was as frozen in place as he was, and her voice sounded like she didn't quite believe he was there. But that only lasted a moment. "Oh, Smithy," she said, then threw herself at him. She nearly bowled him over, but he caught her and held her so tightly, as if he never intended to let her go. </p>
<p>"Paula," he said, with absolutely no stutter, no hesitation. Not now that he was where he was meant to be.</p>
<p>"I was so worried," she said. "They took you away and they wouldn't let me see you. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't leave you there. I just couldn't."</p>
<p>"You saved me," he said, and knew it was nothing but the absolute truth.</p>
<p>"Not just me. Ella helped. And Sam." With her face buried in his shoulder, he couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. He could feel tears leaking out of his own eyes which he was determined to ignore.</p>
<p>"And Thomas," he added.</p>
<p>"How could I forget Thomas? Did Ella tell you what he did? Everyone's been so kind."</p>
<p>"They have."</p>
<p>All of these people, coming together to rescue someone they didn't even know. He knew it wasn't really for him, that they'd done it for Paula. But he still couldn't help but be touched. He owed them so much.</p>
<p>But then there was Paula. He realized now something he hadn't let himself even hope before they'd been stopped in that lonely train station. Something he couldn't keep to himself.</p>
<p>"I love you, Paula," he said, and even though he couldn't remember his life before, he knew he'd never meant anything more.</p>
<p>"Oh, Smithy." He could tell now that Paula really was crying. "I love you, too."</p>
<p>He wasn't prepared for the kiss she gave him, as passionate as she was. He was even less prepared for the cheers that erupted in the pub. Whoever he'd been before, he was as reserved as Paula was spirited, and not accustomed to making public displays of passion.</p>
<p>But for just this moment, he didn't care who watched as he kissed the woman he loved.</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. "I'm Not Like the Others"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>John Smith's classmates all loved stories of mystery and adventure.  They devoured cheap novels where orphans found they had secret destinies. They flocked to the cinema to see stories where men with secret identities solved baffling mysteries.</p>
<p>John wasn't like the other boys. </p>
<p>He hated stories that made being an orphan seem like fun, and mysteries seem like something to be sought out.  John knew those were all lies. Mysteries were unpleasant and orphans were just children with no parents.</p>
<p>Not that he was an orphan. More like half an orphan. </p>
<p>His mother was alive, and lively, one of those people that everyone likes. John adored her. </p>
<p>For his first seven years, his mother had raised him in the small Devon village where he'd been born, while she scraped out a meagre living at whatever employment she could find. She'd be a waitress one year, a saleswoman the next. They'd been poor, but he hadn't realized it. He'd always had enough food, and had been happy enough living in their tiny cottage on a street teeming with other boys. </p>
<p>It was his father who was missing from his life. </p>
<p>He'd known early on there was some sort of mystery about his father—adults in the village would look at him sympathetically, then start whispering when they thought he was far enough away.  When he'd asked her about his father, his mother would distract him and then look sad for the rest of the day. He didn't want his mother to be sad, so he soon learned to stop asking after his father.</p>
<p>Not that he was the only boy in the village without a father.  More than one of his classmates knew his father only as a name on the village cenotaph. But John's father's name wasn't even carved in stone on that monument outside the village church. It seemed as if he'd vanished like the magician's assistant at the magic show his mother had taken him to when he was young.</p>
<p>Being half an orphan had been bad enough, but the year he turned eight, he found out that his life was also a mystery. That was the year his mother had taken him aside and finally told him his father wasn't dead, but missing.</p>
<p>She'd told him everything she knew about his father.  How they'd met. How he hadn't remembered who he was.  How they'd made a quiet life in this village.  How not much more than a week after John had been born, his father had got on a train to Liverpool to discuss taking a job on the newspaper and never come home again. </p>
<p>She also told him that she was sending him to boarding school. "With the last of my stage money," she'd said. Until that day he'd never heard her mention being on the stage, another mystery in his life.</p>
<p>"I don't want to go to boarding school," he said, struggling to take on both the idea that his father was more of a mystery than he'd known, and that he was going to be parted from the village and his friends and the one parent he had left. "Why can't I stay with you?"</p>
<p>"Oh, darling," she said, and held his hand very tightly while she looked at him with brilliant blue eyes so like his own. Blue eyes that matched the glass bead necklace she wore every day, from morning to night, the last gift she had from his father. "You have to go because I shan't be here." She squeezed his hand harder, and the pain of her grip must have been why he felt tears prickle in his eyes.</p>
<p>"Why not?"</p>
<p>"I'm going to look for your father," she said, her voice steady, her chin thrust out. "I couldn't look for him when you were younger because you needed me. But look at you now." She smiled, and chucked him under the chin until he squirmed. "You're a big boy, and so responsible. You'll do well at boarding school." She paused, and her smile wavered.  "And now, I think your father needs me to find him."</p>
<p>John puffed his chest up, proud that his mother felt she could trust him.  He held on to that pride through the process of getting the uniform for his new school (a place that he realized much later was respectable, if a bit shabby), and packing his travelling chest. His pride kept him brave while saying goodbye to his mother at the train station, riding the train by himself for the first time, and being picked up at the station by a teacher from the school. His pride kept him strong for the first week of school, through the excitement of getting to know the teachers, making new friends, finding new places to play on the school grounds. Held onto it until a crashing wave of homesickness finally bowled him over and he climbed his favourite tree at the edge of the football pitch. The tree's branches hid him from his classmates as he cried until he couldn't cry any more. Then he'd stalked back to his dormitory room and gone straight to studying, silently daring the other boys to ask why his eyes were puffy and sticky, and why the skin of his cheeks was splotchy and red.</p>
<p>The first year at the boarding school was the first time he realized he was poor. He only had money for tuck on his birthday. At the end of the month the headmaster would drop increasingly unsubtle reminders to tell his mother his school fees were due. And when she arrived for a visit, his mother's clothes were always a little more threadbare, a little more out of date than those of the other mothers.</p>
<p>None of that changed how he felt about his mother, though.</p>
<p>With her flaming red hair, her bright blue eyes, and the way she befriended everyone from the youngest boy to the most senior schoolmaster, she was more glamourous than any of the other mothers, an exotic parrot with scruffy feathers amongst well-groomed, homely sparrows.</p>
<p>His mother wrote him letters every week, and visited as often as she could, but that never seemed to be often enough, and he missed her fiercely. Sometimes, when it had been too long between visits or letters, he felt like he'd gone from losing one parent to losing both.</p>
<p>Going home the first Christmas was even more difficult. His mother was living in a tiny bedsit in Liverpool, a place that made their small cottage in Devon seem like a castle. Though it was neat and tidy, and his mother had decorated it with holly and paper garlands, it hadn't felt like <i>home</i>.</p>
<p>Things got easier after that.</p>
<p>By the time of his first summer holidays, his mother had chased a rumour about his father from Liverpool to Croydon, and fetched up in a bright, cheerful flat she shared with a friend from her theatre days. Constance had been a dancer on the music hall circuit, and now she worked as a saleswoman in Kennards department store. The rumour about his father hadn't panned out, but Connie's flat was a place for his mother to regroup. </p>
<p>Her letters from the next two years were full of funny stories about working at Kennards with Constance, and taking a night school stenography class. In a good month, her letters included a new clue about his father.</p>
<p>"I'll find him, John," she said each time she visited. "I know I will."</p>
<p>It was two years before she finally arrived for a visit and told John, "I found him."</p>
<p>It should have been a great moment, the best moment. But his mother didn't seem at all happy about it, and followed her news up by telling him that his father didn't remember her. That he didn't remember <i>them</i>.</p>
<p>"Then tell him!" John said, all but yelling at his mother. It seemed simple enough to him. If his father didn't remember them, she had to tell him.  To <i>remind</i> him. To <i>make</i> him remember them.</p>
<p>"Think, John," she said. "If I tell him, and he still doesn't remember me, what happens then? Do I force him to acknowledge our marriage? He's an honourable man; I know he would live up to his obligations. But how would he feel about me, a wife he doesn't remember? About you, a son he didn't know he had?</p>
<p>"I want him to remember us on his own, John. I want him to be with us because he wants to. Not because he has to."</p>
<p>John wanted to tell her she was wrong. That she should tell him anyway. That he needed a father. But in his heart, he knew she was right.</p>
<p>At least now he had a name for his father: Charles Rainier. And his mother, who took a position as Rainier's personal secretary, filled her letters with details about the father he had yet to meet.</p>
<p>He took to reading the out-of-date newspapers their history teacher left in the classroom, scouring the business section for mentions of Rainier's and the man who ran it. Once he even tore out a grainy picture identified as <i>Charles Rainier, Leader of Industry</i> from a story on Rainier's buying a new cable works somewhere in the midlands. He kept the picture tucked into the back of a copy of The Three Musketeers his mother had given him for his birthday, and would pull it out when he was alone, searching Rainier's features for some resemblance to his own.</p>
<p>He kept hoping that he'd get a letter from his mother one day, telling him his father had remembered, that he wanted them both to live with them in his estate, Random Hall. </p>
<p>Not that he cared about being rich. His mother was making enough now that they were comfortable. He had enough money for weekly tuck, enough even that he could share it with boys who had none, and the headmaster no longer felt the need to give him regular reminders that his school fees were due. He didn't want Rainier's money. He just wanted his family to be whole.</p>
<p>But that letter never came. Not when his mother helped Rainier negotiate a merger that doubled the size of the company. Not when she helped him run a successful campaign for Parliament. John began to despair that his father would ever remember his past.</p>
<p>The week after the election, the last of his hope that his family would ever be whole died.</p>
<p>He was called to the headmaster's office by a prefect on that Friday afternoon. As he walked down the hall, he couldn't help but worry. The only reasons students were usually called to the headmaster's office were because they were in trouble, or because there was a family emergency. John knew he wasn't in trouble, which left family emergency. He was afraid something had happened to his mother; he didn't want to be a whole orphan.</p>
<p>When he entered the headmaster's office and saw his mother sitting in the chair reserved for visiting parents, he was overcome with relief.</p>
<p>The relief didn't last long, though. His mother looked as though she'd just come from a funeral.</p>
<p>"Your mother has just delivered some bad news, Smith," the headmaster said. "She's withdrawing you from school."</p>
<p>"What? Why?"</p>
<p>"I've had a professional opportunity in Canada present itself," his mother said, her back upright, her expression impassive. </p>
<p>"As I told you, Mrs. Smith, we'd be happy to keep Smith for the remainder of the term," the headmaster said. "We have more than a few students whose parents are in the colonies."</p>
<p>"I'm afraid I couldn't bear to be parted from my son by that much distance." Her voice was strained, as brittle as her posture. John began panicking, sure something had happened to his father. His death was the only thing he could see driving his mother away from England.</p>
<p>"I'm sorry to hear that. Smith has always been a credit to the school." The headmaster stood. "I'll escort you to his dormitory so he can get packed up. We'll have his trunk delivered to your hotel in the morning."</p>
<p>"I'm leaving now?" Smith felt a panic rising in his throat as the headmaster led them through the corridors.</p>
<p>"You can say goodbye to your friends when you've packed up, but I'm afraid we have to leave in the morning," his mother said. </p>
<p>He was so stunned, he didn't say anything further.</p>
<p>With his mother's help, he packed up his trunk. (She refolded almost everything he put in, and after she'd refolded his third shirt, he thought she was going to say something about it. Instead, she simply smoothed out the wrinkles and sighed.)</p>
<p>He had so many questions for her, he didn't know where to start.  But he also knew better than to ask them here. Especially after the day's final class bell sounded and his friends started piling into the dormitory.</p>
<p>He endured numerous pats on the back, and dozens of well-meaning handshakes before he placed the last item in the trunk and his mother closed it up. Then it was time to go.</p>
<p>There was one hotel in town where all visiting parents stayed, and that was where his mother took him. She was silent on the walk to the hotel, which wasn't at all like her, and silent as they took the elevator to their room.</p>
<p>John kept his own silence until he closed the door of their hotel room behind him.</p>
<p>"Mother! Can you tell me what's going on now?"</p>
<p>She sat on the bed, and the rigid straightness of her spine that she'd held since the headmaster's office disappeared as she leaned into her hands and sobbed.</p>
<p>"What's wrong," he said, and sat down beside her, unsure what to do. His mother had always been the one to comfort him. All he could do was awkwardly pat her back.</p>
<p>"Is it father?" he finally asked. "Has something happened to him?"</p>
<p>"No," she managed to force out. "At least not the way you think."</p>
<p>"Has he decided he doesn't want to be an MP after all?"</p>
<p>"No." She brought out a handkerchief and patted her eyes. "I think he'll be rather good at it."</p>
<p>"Then why…" He couldn't fathom what had brought on this sudden move across the ocean.</p>
<p>"He asked me to marry him," his mother blurted out, the anguish on her face at odds with what sounded like good news.</p>
<p>"I don't see the problem."</p>
<p>"The problem, dear boy, is that he still doesn't remember me. He phrased the proposal as a business merger." She laughed, and it was a bitter sound. "He needs someone to run his household and host dinner parties, and he thought I fit the bill. He even mentioned you. Said of course he would adopt you as his own. Adopt his own son! I might have laughed if I hadn't been trying not to cry."</p>
<p>"Oh, Mother."</p>
<p>All awkwardness vanished, and he hugged his mother tightly until he felt her relax.</p>
<p>"Are we sailing tomorrow?" he asked as his mother dabbed her eyes again.</p>
<p>"No, our ship leaves in three days. But there's somewhere I'd like to visit before we leave."</p>
<p>"Devon?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Devon," she confirmed.</p>
<hr/>
<p>They hadn't been back to his birthplace since John had been sent off to school, but as soon as they arrived, it felt like they'd never left. Mrs. Deventer still owned the inn. Mr. Durham was still the vicar. And many of the boys he'd played with lived in the same cottages.</p>
<p>John expected they'd stay at the inn, but instead his mother collected a key from Dr. Sims and then took him to a cottage he'd only ever seen from the outside. It was a cheerful-looking place, bigger by far than the cottage he'd spent his first seven years in. The gate squeaked when they opened it, and the branch from a cherry tree, just coming into bloom, drooped over the walk.</p>
<p>"Someone should trim that," John said as he ducked underneath the branch in question.</p>
<p>"It's too pretty to cut," his mother said with a smile.</p>
<p>"You sound like you've said that before."</p>
<p>"I have, young man. This is where you were born." And she opened the door with a flourish as he realized there were still things about his mother he still didn't know. </p>
<p>They spent the first two days there visiting old friends and exploring old haunts. His old friends made fun of his accent, made posh by his time at boarding school, before they invited him to join their games and rambles around the village.  His mother had tea with the vicar and Mrs. Deventer, and visited the local pub with Dr. Sims.</p>
<p>It was the most carefree time he'd had since they'd lived in the village. He'd be sorry to leave the village, and England, but was grateful they'd had the chance to visit one last time.</p>
<p>On their last morning, John was sitting in the living room as his mother was finishing packing their trunks, preparing them for delivery to their ship in Plymouth when he heard a scratching at the door, as if someone was putting their key in the lock.</p>
<p>"Mother!" he called out as the handle turned and the door opened.</p>
<p>Standing at the threshold was a distinguished-looking man John recognized as the living version of the grainy picture that even now was stuck in the back of his copy of The Three Musketeers.</p>
<p>"What is it, dear?" his mother asked as she came into the room. She froze not two steps in, her mouth caught in a shocked O as she stared at the man at the door.</p>
<p>"Paula?" the man, his <i>father</i>, said, his voice deep but wavering.</p>
<p>"Smithy," his mother said, her expression .  "Oh, Smithy."</p>
<p>Then she was in his arms and the two of them were clutching each other as tightly as his mother held him every time she left him at school.</p>
<p>The moment was so perfect, but so private, that John started backing away, not wanting to intrude. But at just that moment, the man…Smithy…his father, pulled away from his mother and looked right at him.</p>
<p>"Is this John?" his father asked, and even from this distance John could see his brown eyes were filled with tears.  He held out his hand towards John, his fingers trembling.</p>
<p>In an instant, John was no longer a young man of 13 feigning a stiff upper lip, but a boy of four, trying to understand why he had no father. He launched himself across the distance between them, and was taken into the embrace of both his parents. </p>
<p>For the first time he could remember, he wasn't an orphan, not even half of one. For the first time, his past wasn't a mystery to be solved.</p>
<p>With his face pressed into his father's shoulder, his mother's hand on the back of his head, he wept shuddering tears not of loss, but of joy.</p>
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